


Easier to Ask Forgiveness Than Permission

by trashyfiction



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alpha!John, Angst, Canon Adaptation, M/M, Omega!Sherlock, Omegaverse, Reichenbach themes, The dying detective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-05
Updated: 2013-08-05
Packaged: 2017-12-22 11:35:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/912737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashyfiction/pseuds/trashyfiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Along comes Mr. Culverton Smith, with his clumsy poisoning attempt, just begging to have a confession wrung out of him. Such a convenient opportunity he makes. A neat little test to see if Sherlock’s prepared to burn himself instead of allowing Moriarty to do it for him. </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Easier to Ask Forgiveness Than Permission

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mid0nz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mid0nz/gifts).



> This is a prize fic for Mid0nz, who won me in the DashCon Sherlock auction! Mid0nz, thank you for bidding on me, and thank you for giving me such a wonderful prompt! I've loved writing it! I hope you enjoy the result!
> 
> I also want to thank my two betas [Cousin Cecily](http://archiveofourown.org/users/CousinCecily/pseuds/CousinCecily) and [S_Alphaios](http://archiveofourown.org/users/S_Alphaios/pseuds/S_Alphaios), without whom this fic could not have happened. Any remaining weirdnesses and mistakes are purely due to my own stubbornness and poor taste. And speaking of poor taste, coming soon, to a computer screen near you, is the gdocs-exploded-colors-everywhere-beta-process-version of this feature fic. 
> 
> Also, a warning: Sherlock, as I am writing him here, is not a good example of a healthy relationship-haver. Please don't take his actions as something to emulate, they're not romantic, not in real life, and they cause both him and John a lot of unnecessary pain. This is fantasy!  
> That said, enjoy and, if you feel so inspired, please leave feedback!

 While John doctors his tea and pretends not to check his phone every minute and a half, Sherlock clicks through his email, skimming messages—adultery, boring; insurance fraud, dull; memo from Lestrade demanding further evidence on the Culverton Smith case, hmm, useful, maybe. Sherlock flicks his eyes towards the small package on the mantel before making up his mind and letting out a put-upon sigh. 

“Oh, for god’s sake, John, _go_! I can’t concentrate with you—” he pauses, “— _fidgeting_ me like that. It’s enough to drive a man insane.”

“Sherlock! I am not going to faff off to a conference when we’re still figuring all this out.” John gestures vaguely in the space between them.

“While you’re still deciding whether or not you want to fuck me given I don’t do bonding or relationships, you mean.”

John coughs uncomfortably but doesn’t say anything.

“On the contrary, John, I think this is a perfect time for you to ‘faff off to a conference.’ You clearly need to think things over. I want you to do it somewhere else—your thinking is unbelievably annoying—and Lestrade has to have more ‘substantial’ evidence if he’s to satisfy the bureaucrats and close that case I solved for him a week and a half ago—while you were on your failed theater date.” Sherlock over-aspirates the 't’, the barest hint of bitterness in his voice.

John sighs and puts up a bit more of a fuss but Sherlock has already stopped paying attention; he’s planning. A few hours later, Sherlock hears John clomp down the stairs, footfalls heavier and weighted to the right because of the duffle slung over his shoulder. Sherlock snaps his laptop shut and steeples his hands before his face. He flicks through clips and sound-bites of relevant memories, mixing and matching and discarding to make order.

Clean cab, the fabric of the seats worn and smelling faintly of old air freshener. That spot of foam on the man's neck, his dropped 'h's and little-ole-me arrogance. Sherlock hadn't thought of anything beyond the present, the obvious, the thrill of the game nearing its close. Bits of information about this man and his crimes. “ _I was warned about you.”_ Here's where it started for Sherlock. “ _Someone out there who’s noticed you...got yourself a fan.”_ Different game, now.

Chlorine, stale humidity. For a lost second, he thinks about the feel of clammy, second-hand moisture sticking the silk of his trouser lining to his knees. He thinks about the grip of John’s gun slipping slowly, infinitesimally in the sweat of his palm. He remembers thinking, a bit manic, that the last time he’d pointed a gun at someone it had been at much closer range and, more importantly, completely empty. No use here, not with someone truly, competently intelligent threatening him. “ _I mean, I’m going to kill you anyway, someday. I don’t want to rush it, though. I’m saving it up for something special. No, no, no, no, no, if you don’t stop prying, I’ll burn you. I’ll burn the_ heart _out of you.”_ Sherlock had noticed, halfway through this little monologue, that Moriarty’s pupils were dilated. And they didn’t move as much as they should, given the animation of his face. They stayed. Fixed on Sherlock.

The package on the mantel—small box, really. Cheap, taped cardboard, the kind you can pick up at any DHL. Anonymous, easy. It had arrived at seven o’clock in the evening, not normal post hours. Sherlock hadn't opened it, obviously. For god’s sake, not a week after an airborne poisoning case and he receives a mysterious parcel with no return address? Who did this man think he was dealing with, an imbecile? 

And finally, Culverton Smith: he of jaundiced face and pock-sized pores, bald head pinker than a slap. Simple man. Simple case, too. Nephew died quickly, a tropical disease, despite never having left the United Kingdom in his life. Culverton Smith himself, an avid botanist, with a greenhouse boasting specimens from across the globe. Transparent. Overly ambitious revenge plot. But not a shred of evidence that will hold up in court. Not given the idiots who make up juries and prosecution teams. Everything purely circumstantial. 

Easy enough to mimic the symptoms. Nothing Sherlock can’t pull together in a few days. He’ll look positively deathly. 

The clip of Moriarty’s voice replays in Sherlock’s mind, unsolicited: “ _burn the_ heart _out of you.”_ He will, too, given the time. And so far, time is all Sherlock has given Jim Moriarty, letting months slip by since their last game, doing nothing but wait. Time does one thing, Sherlock reminds himself, it runs out. And no one wins defensive wars.

He shakes his head. There’s only one thing for it. Has only ever been one thing for it. He’s known since the pool, but hasn’t wanted to. He’s let the hum of John and cases and comfortingly petty warfare over the state of the kitchen drown out the sense of urgency building up in the peripheral rooms and corridors of his mind palace. Its garden houses and apiaries and terraces buzzing off key because he doesn’t know if he can, if he’s willing, to do what it takes. He’s not sure if he's truly cold enough. Because he knows Moriarty too well, after five minutes, not to understand that this won’t end properly until one of them dies and Sherlock can far better control the circumstances of his own death than he can Moriarty’s. 

If ever there were a time for sociopathy, strategically, it’s now.

Now, along comes Mr. Culverton Smith, with his clumsy poisoning attempt, just begging to have a confession wrung out of him. Such a _convenient_ opportunity he makes. A neat little test to see if Sherlock’s prepared to burn himself instead of allowing Moriarty to do it for him. Because if Sherlock can do this to John over a pawn, he’ll be able to do it again, only worse, to stop Moriarty. Anyone else and it wouldn’t matter. Sherlock could sit back, wait for whomever it might be to make a mistake, swoop in, and know immediately what to do. The right answers would just coalesce. He’d save the day, give John a new blog post, and earn himself a neat, tidy little casefile for his personal encyclopoedia. A bit of knowledge to be used for future reference.

Not so with Jim Moriarty, the spider in his web, watching the quiver and tremble of each radiation, orchestrating machinations beyond what Sherlock's ever taken on before. He'd be thrilled if he weren't so fucking furious. John should not be a part of this.

John is gone for three days and Sherlock takes a kind of familiar, self-destructive glee in not eating or drinking anything for that time. He doesn’t bathe. He doesn’t sleep. He slaps on nicotine patches and makes himself think about what he’s doing. The whole ritual is almost comforting and, some small part of his brain reminds him, it's supposed to be. Humans are creatures of habit and Sherlock's no different in that. If it wouldn't tip John off immediately and ruin everything, Sherlock would feel justified in shooting up.

_This is what it will be like, you know_ , Sherlock tells himself as he traces the cracks on the ceiling with his eyes. Lets himself become maudlin. _You hurt him senselessly all the time; you’re going to do it again, and when you really do it, when you_ really _do it, out of selfishness and childish need, not heroism (because yes, you are saving his life, but you're not saving it for him, you're saving it for you), you will not be able to delete it. You will try to, and instead it will linger. It will infest every other task you take on and it won’t go away. Not ever. Never? Maybe. Maybe it will fade, if you're lucky. You certainly can't expect him to forgive you so no hope for relief there_. 

Sherlock goes ‘round and ‘round until he finally forces himself to focus on setting up the experiment, at least for a little while. He manages to text Lestrade and make sure Mrs. Hudson hears him hacking up a lung before locking himself in his bedroom.

Sometime during the wee hours of the morning on the second day, Sherlock thinks: maybe John won’t be convinced. Maybe John will see through him, and the test will fail, and Sherlock won’t have to do any of this. Won’t have to plan to die and lie to John in a way Sherlock _knows_ is not good. Unforgivably Not Good.

_Yes._ Perfect _. And then you can have your idyllic few months (or weeks, even) sharing secrets and fucking reactionary contingency plans, and he will_ die _. He is your heart and he will be burned right out of you like excising bad poetry and that is not acceptable. No. Hurt him now. See if you can. Make your plans and do what you do best (this is old hat now, Sherlock; this is just being how you've always been. Oh, but it's_ not. _) and he’ll live and you can look longer._

_Or maybe the test will be too successful: convincing him you’re on your deathbed could be the final straw that pushes him away for good. He could move out, take up with Sarah or some equivalent and guilelessly keep himself off the radar in the process. No. No, it’s too late for that. It doesn’t matter if he seems to care; Moriarty already knows that you do. Keep your eyes on the endgame, Holmes._

_Maybe it won’t hurt him at all, or only a little bit. Maybe he will feel bad out of the goodness of his heart and still won’t really care, not the bone-deep caring that the lines dug into his forehead and under his eyes let you_ know _he is capable of, and that’s the best case scenario, isn’t it? Yes, maybe he will only hurt a little, or only for a little while. If that fact hurts you, well, it will at least be a pleasant, martyred sort of hurt and nursing it might be rather vindicating._ Best case _._

When John comes back Sherlock has beeswax rubbed into the creases of his lips, drops in his eyes, and three days’ starvation sapping his voice and movement. There’s makeup, yellows and violets, accentuating every hollow of his face. The sweats of his approaching heat, which shouldn’t come for a few days yet, only increase the effect.

Sherlock expects anger, and he’ll get it, he’s sure, but apparently not right away. John lays eyes on him, lying as pitifully as he can manage, and shows nothing but worry. His mouth sets, flat and tight around the corners, and it’s positively beastly convincing him not to come any closer. “Oh, for god’s sake, don’t touch me! You’ll do no good over here,” Sherlock tries, sneering. “I need a botanist, a chemist, not a _GP._ ”

Clenched jaw—not pleased, but rolling with the insult. He really is worried. “What’s _wrong_ , Sherlock? I need to know your symptoms, when this all started; I need to _help_. Or I'm calling an ambulance.” John makes to step forward.

Sherlock pitches a fit, insists he’s dying, contagious, with only one hope to save his life, watching as John’s trust, that deeply misguided compulsion to follow along wherever Sherlock may lead, heart sanguine, slowly wins out over his immediate fears for Sherlock’s health. Extraordinary. Even with Sherlock’s life apparently teetering on the line, John trusts him to know best. Sherlock shouldn’t know what to do with this kind of foolish hero worship, but he does. He drinks it in, basks in it, even now. It’s second nature. Couldn’t help it if he tried.

God, though, it’s working. John is falling for it, stepping back, following instructions. Sherlock feels the same rush he always feels when John follows him, thrills at the possessive power of it. _See, there: sociopathy; hold onto that, freak, enjoy it, it’ll carry you through this and keep John alive. Don’t stop now._

He could stop; be a real person, take pity. No. No _,_ he really couldn’t.

Sherlock rambles strategically and makes sure to inject his monologue with just the right amount of coherency to convince John to seek out Culverton Smith. He comes back an hour or so later, the would-be poisoner five minutes behind. “I need you to hide for me, John. He can’t see you, but I need you here. Go on.” Sherlock nods towards the wardrobe.

John pauses, looks at Sherlock for a moment, uncomprehending, and Sherlock can see the pain and worry on his face. For another three seconds, Sherlock watches him, sees him thinking Sherlock has lost it, has gone completely mad with the fatal illness eating at his brain. On the fourth second, John Watson’s brows relax up and the lines around his eyes tighten in a way that looks like laughter gone wrong. His mouth is an open accusation.

“If you love me, John. Please. He’ll be here soon.” Sherlock forces himself not to hold his breath.

John shakes his head, expels the air from his lungs in a soft, bitter sound, still not quite a laugh, and shuts himself in the wardrobe.

_Fuck. Fuck. You can’t do this, Holmes, abort. Damage control, now, while there’s still time._

No.

Sherlock schools his face into the very picture of pestilence and coughs when Culverton Smith enters the room. God, this part is almost boring. The interrogation, such that it is, passes as easily as expected, and within fifteen minutes Sherlock has his confession and Culverton Smith’s bewilderment, to boot. (‘ _Oh, Mr. Holmes! Let me gloat over poisoning you so easily! What’s that, sir? Pass you nicotine patch? Are you quite alright?_ What! _You_ are _!?’ Cue sputtering and impotent threats)._ He’d texted Lestrade again before John had returned, and the Detective Inspector is waiting outside when Sherlock sends Culverton Smith down along with John and his curt statement. Sherlock fires off another text to Lestrade, electronically begging out of his own statement on grounds of malnourishment and general weakness. He’ll fill in any missing details for the Met within the week.

When he’d left his hiding place, John hadn’t even looked at Sherlock, just walked with a stiff stride out the bedroom door, his eyes facing front. Now, Sherlock imagines John’s mouth moving as he gives Lestrade the details of the confession: probably sighing and biting off the ends of his words and flexing his fingers with impatience, all the while being as polite as conceivably possible out of sheer rage, proper Englishman to the last. Sherlock wants to hold onto his vowels and consonants before they can become accusations. 

When Lestrade finally leaves and John comes upstairs, Sherlock can see the questions building up behind John's teeth: How long would you have lied to me? Why did you? Couldn't you have texted the man? Recorded the conversation? (Because I needed to hurt you, John.) Don't you know how I feel about you? (Yes, John, how could I not?)

What he says is, “You need to eat something. I think I can get a sports drink from Speedy's to replenish your electrolytes.”

Sherlock’s face is impassive. “You're angry that I lied to you. I did, but only for approximately two and a half hours. Given that a murderer is now behind bars, I’d consider it a justified trade-off.”

“Are you fucking joking?” John looks betrayed. It’s a new look on him, similar to the one he had when Sherlock didn’t exhibit appropriate concern for Moriarty’s bombing victims, but harder in the mouth, personal now. Sherlock hates it.

He answers flippantly. “What do you care? I’m fine now. You were never in any danger and neither was I.”

“God, you machine,” John mutters under his breath and runs a hand through his hair. “I'm ordering you a takeaway and you're eating all of it.”

Sherlock makes a noncommittal noise. John goes out to the kitchen, presumably to retrieve the takeaway menus and place an order. Sherlock hears him speaking, then going down the stairs and out the front door. Sherlock heads to the bathroom to wash his face, taking a few large gulps of tap water from his cupped palms and running the excess through his hair. He has the impulse to do something dramatic and cathartic: slide down a wall and sit on the floor, rest his head between his knees, but he’s in the middle of the room with nothing at his back and, also, he has control of himself. He has a choice to make, now: He can leave before John gets back, consider the test over now that John knows Sherlock’s not dying; or he can stay, throw himself into the mess of John’s hurt and his own stubborn, hypocritical guilt. If he runs off, like he always does, relations in 221b will probably be chilly for the next few weeks and sex will certainly be taken off the table, but things will blow over eventually. John will forgive him—for this, at least. But Sherlock will only have half a result to his experiment and only the easy half at that. He knows he’ll be able to pull off the initial lie but has no clue about the follow through and that’s not good enough. The whole point of this is proving he can do more than half measures, after all.

So he returns to his bedroom, can’t bring himself to sit down, and hovers by the bookshelf, not quite pacing. John comes back in a few minutes with two bottles of something so blue it looks positively radioactive and tosses one of them to Sherlock, who catches it and takes a sip as a small peace offering. John nods in approval but doesn't say anything and the silence stretches out.

“I suppose you want to talk about this,” Sherlock prompts, when he can't take it anymore. God, how had he ever thought this would be like following old habits and patterns? Sure, he's been cruel before; he's been that all his life, more often than not, simply as a side effect of some other, vastly more important, objective but he's never bothered to stick around and deal with the aftermath before. This little test of his is getting out of hand.

“Okay, then. You’re the fucking prodigy, why don't you start? Tell me why I'm angry and why I shouldn't be any longer.”

Sherlock looks away. Adjusts his jaw and pushes out his lower lip. Lies. “I haven't the faintest idea why you're so angry. Like I said, there was never any real danger and you only thought there was for a couple hours.” Why is he doing this? Why isn't Sherlock leaving John to burn out his betrayal and soured fear by himself? It’s pathetic. The both of them are.

“Oh, go ahead,” John challenges, “keep telling me you don’t understand. Keep telling me the great Sherlock Holmes can’t grasp why a simple man wouldn’t want to lose his best friend. Go on, then.”

Sherlock softens, doesn’t know quite what he’s saying. “You’d be alright though, in the long run, you know that. Mycroft would keep up my half of the rent and you’d have—”

“Is that what you think this is about? You complete and utter bastard! I don’t care about the rent, fuck’s sake!” John's suddenly only a foot away from him, and looks about ready to throw a punch.

“I’m,” Sherlock swallows, trying to keep some kind of honesty from slipping out, “I’m not what you think—This thing you need...I’m not..I can’t...” However Sherlock had planned to end that sentence, it goes out of his head. He loses it in favor of John Watson’s face, caring far too much about him, too hurt, open and guileless and completely impossible to deal with. Anyway, he needs to keep lying to John; now is not the time to tell him that Sherlock will never be enough. Counterproductive. Sherlock kisses him, forces John’s mouth open with his tongue and bites at his lips, and it’s hopelessly inadequate.

John pushes him away almost immediately; he might as well have struck Sherlock. “No. No. I won’t.” Despite panting a little, John looks sad now, more than angry. “I can’t. Not if you’re going to keep doing things like this. I can do an awful lot for you, I can. I’ll go into battle with you, Sherlock, every day, whenever and wherever, but I can’t do this.”

Fury flares up, unexpected, from somewhere deep and high in Sherlock's chest. “Oh, but you need me, John. To give your civilian life colour, to keep yourself from decaying with disuse and mundanity. The sheer _perversity_ of living out your life among hypochondriacs and respiratory infections and sprained ankles when you could have me. Do you think you could do it, _John?_ And what’s more, you want me.” He takes a step closer so they’re pressed chest to chest. He’s gone too far, knows that. Also knows that John can smell him and the heat building on him more powerfully than it should be this early. Wields it like a weapon, going about this all the wrong way, but he doesn’t care anymore. “Tell me you don’t. Tell me you can see straight right now. I’ll lie to you if you lie to me, and we’ll stop.”

The anger’s back in John’s eyes; Sherlock catches John’s jaw twitching and his brows lowering before he moves lightning fast to crowd Sherlock backward into the bookcase. Sherlock drops the sports drink. When John speaks it’s low, his lips barely moving to form the sounds. “Don’t you dare hold that against me, Sherlock, don't you fucking dare. And you _know_ this is about more than wanting you. Don’t get me wrong, I could fuck that smirk right off your self-satisfied, manipulative face but I also possess a modicum of self-preservation, despite what you might think, and I won’t touch you if you ever,” he swallows hard, “god, if you _ever_ do that to me again. I couldn’t.” The sob lodges in John’s throat but Sherlock can hear it, waiting to be spoken like the grief waiting to bloom on John’s face.

Sherlock doesn’t know how to do anything else. He doesn’t know how to soothe or how to heal. That’s John’s area. Sherlock only knows how to cut into people and expose their very core; he knows how to flay a person alive and expose every childhood quirk and trauma, every complex and aberration and stubborn mediocrity, but he does not know how to be kind. Kind isn’t in his repertoire.

So he kisses John, again, softly this time, taking John’s upper lip between his own and offering the fullness of his bottom one for John to suckle on. He wishes he weren’t lying. This kiss has so much to it that’s real. It shouldn’t have to be a lie. “I won’t. John. I won’t do it again.”

John reaches up to press both his palms to the sides of Sherlock’s face, holding their mouths together. Sherlock thinks John might start crying, but he doesn’t. Instead he inhales deeply through his nose and shivers, speaking directly into Sherlock’s lips. “God, Sherlock, you smell like heat. I want to have you. I want—” he stops himself where he’s been practically rubbing into Sherlock’s sweat and pulls back just enough to look at him. John’s eyes are blown wide and they focus directly on Sherlock’s. “I want a _lot_. I did what you asked; I’ve been thinking these past three days at the conference and I need more than just being flatmates who fuck. I need _you_ , Sherlock, if we’re going to do this.” John lets his forehead fall to rest against Sherlock’s. He only can because Sherlock is slumped against the bookcase, bending his knees and curling his spine to stay in John’s space because this is just as fucking important as he’d thought it would be. Damn it. Damn it to hell.

God, Sherlock hates it. He just wants to stop, for a minute. Stop for as long as it takes to do this with John, be with John for this. Sherlock opens his mouth to answer and realizes he doesn’t know what lie to tell, or what part of the truth. He knows he wants John in the way John wants him. That much is true. He knows that if Moriarty weren’t forcing him towards stakes he’d never have elected to play for, he would already be pulling John into his bed. He would have thrown away every practical, logical reservation and given himself entirely to John Watson the moment he asked. He wouldn’t be perfect at it; he’d fuck it up, he knows that, but he’d at least have given himself over with a pure heart and without stratagems building up behind every word and action.

“You can have me, John,” he tells the truth that would have been, “all of me, the way you want. I want it, too.” 

John lets out a whimper and presses back into Sherlock’s space, pinning his wrists against the bookcase. John’s eyebrows are pressing together and up, and Sherlock doesn’t understand how two lines of hair and muscle can be filled with so much terrified hope. Fuck. Sherlock is fucked. John is well and truly fucked and will not thank Sherlock for this, in the long run.

Sherlock kisses him again, presses past the seam of John’s lips with his tongue, and sucks John’s into his mouth. He can feel John’s erection moving in barely detectable, probably unconscious, thrusts against his thigh. John’s thumbs rub little circles into Sherlock’s wrists where he’s restraining them against the shelving, like John doesn’t know what he should be doing with his hands. He does, clearly; if they were still fighting, if they were still fighting the way friends and enemies fight, instead of how new lovers do, John would be grinding Sherlock’s ulna and radius together and making movement impossible. Instead, he rubs his little circles. He pants into Sherlock’s mouth and wears his heart in those damn two lines of facial muscle and hair above his eyes. It’s more than Sherlock can bear.

“Hell, Sherlock,” John breathes, and he could be reading Sherlock’s mind, or the surface of it, at least, “it’s like you’re in my head, like you’re _in_ me and can see everything.”

Sherlock takes it for the out it is. An excuse to _do_ something and stop fucking indulging on the edge of breaking everything. “I can be, John, let me at you.” Sherlock’s hands start moving over buttons and zips, pulling and tugging and quickly divesting John of his clothing. John toes off his shoes and fumbles at his socks with his toes, his eyes a bit dazed. Sherlock removes his own clothing quickly and methodically.

He wants this all to be over. He wants to be sated and leaving and not looking back, because that’s better than dwelling on leaving.

He wants to take hours to taste John’s sweat when he’s desperate. He wants to swallow every gasp and whimper like it’s his due.

He wants to be thousands of miles away, across borders and multiple aliases, killing Moriarty slowly from behind, without a single thread pulling his solar plexus and the corners of his eyes back to John Watson.

He wants to open John up, swallow his cock and hold his knot in his mouth like a gift. Like having his heart in his throat.

He wants to never have started this. There must have been another way. He must have already cocked it up somehow. There _must_ be some other solution; some way to neutralize Jim Moriarty without slowly and carefully gutting John Watson.

He wants to, though. He wants to see inside John. He wants to _take_. ( _Maybe Jim’s just giving him the opportunity._ )

“Lie down.” John does, stretching out over the bed and looking back at Sherlock with black eyes. So much fucking trust. Far too much.

Sherlock crawls up onto the bed and over John, resting his weight on one forearm pressed into the mattress beside John’s head. He reaches his hand behind him and dips his fingers into the natural lubrication his body started producing the moment John and the stress of him stepped into Sherlock's personal space. Once they’re coated, Sherlock wraps his fingers around John’s cock, slicking it, before reaching back to lube up again. He’s weeping fluid at this point, anus clenching and releasing like his heat were due an hour ago and not in the next few days. He presses the blunt tip of his middle finger against John’s arsehole.

John’s not meant for this, not like Sherlock is, and Sherlock has to coax John’s body into accepting him. John keeps opening and closing his eyes, like he can’t make up his mind between looking at Sherlock and shutting out everything but the oblivion behind his lids. Sherlock refuses to analyze this; it’s too much as it is; he doesn’t have it in him to go searching in the scrunch of John’s crow’s feet and the gap between his bottom and top lip. (What would he _find_?) So he presses his finger deep, breaching John’s body and making him, them both, cry out unexpectedly.

Sherlock squeezes the piece of himself that’s lying, the portion of his psyche that’s holding onto, if not the logistics of the whole thing, then at least the necessity of logistics, into some hidden broom closet in his mind. _God, there’s no room for logistics when John Watson is opening around your hands. Get yourself together._ Sherlock moans.

For a split second, Sherlock composes a kind of absurd marriage in his mind, some sort of request for consent. He sees just the way he’d try to confess to John without confessing; how he’d try to manipulate himself into John’s blessing. What are the circumstances in which John would incontrovertibly promise himself to Sherlock? Because, really, Sherlock just wants them to be in love, for different reasons and in different ways than they are now, without the pinching intensity of anticipated loss and the taste of guilt clogging up his throat.

“ _John, are you listening to me?” Sherlock would ask._

_After a moment, during which John would realize he was being addressed and swallow to wet his throat, he’d answer. “Yes.”_

“ _John, you are the only person to enter my life who’s ever stuck worth a damn, beyond necessity and self-promotion. I’m not an easy person to live with or care about and I never will be.”_ Sherlock crooks his finger until John moans _. “Will you have me, anyway? Forever, beyond death?”_

“Oh, yes. Sherlock.” John can barely vocalize. Sherlock pulls his middle finger almost completely out and inserts his ring finger alongside it, earning a low whine and slow hip roll. Sherlock brings his face down between John’s thighs and rubs his cheek into the spot where John’s legs meet his groin. His lips brush against John’s testicles. He inhales through his nose.

Sherlock sucks one of John’s balls lazily into his mouth, stroking his fingers in and out, slowly. The sheer sensual pleasure of _partaking_ of John, in so many ways, starts to block out everything else from Sherlock’s focus. He almost sighs in sheer relief but it comes out as sharp, groaning exhalation when John writhes at a particularly enthusiastic application of suction.

Sherlock can feel the ravenous need of his heat growing and soon he'll be overwhelmed by its hunger but, for now, he still has time. He has to crawl inside John, open him up; he has to pull him apart and wreck him and that far outweighs any personal physiological itch. Sherlock slides his mouth over the head of John's cock and goes down, tasting John and himself, until John rests at the opening of Sherlock's esophagus. Sherlock sucks, pulls up.

“Oh, fuck, Sherlock,” cracking voice, shuddering hips. Sherlock goes down again. Pulls back up. Adds his index finger along with the other two and curls, gentles John's prostate and sends his whole body scrunching together. John's knees and shoulders jerk up as if pulled towards each other by an invisible thread. He whines and it's almost a sob.

Sherlock knows John doesn't fuck like this. John services his partners with conscientious enthusiasm and takes his own pleasure indulgently and mindfully, knowing just what he needs. John lets go, but he doesn't lose his head. He's not used to being _taken._ Sherlock takes him down and feels the knot at the base of John's cock start to swell under his lips. Sherlock hums, calling up John's knot, and massages the swelling with his lips and tongue while John's glans rests pushed past Sherlock's gag reflex. John whimpers and brings his hand to hover over Sherlock's head, fingers flexing and brushing Sherlock's hair and the tip of his ear.

Suddenly (or maybe not so suddenly; he thinks it's been building while he thought it was sequestered safely away) Sherlock wants to cry. He blames (tries to blame) it on the cock in his throat rather than the fact that, oh _god_ , he's eyeball deep in John H. Watson and it's too damn much. He wants more; he wants so much more, but fuck is it too much, having John break to pieces around him, _knowing_ it's too much for John, too. They are soldiers and sociopaths coming apart like children and Sherlock doesn't know what to do. Stupid, stupid, thinking that having sex would make any of this any better.

So he reaches behind himself again with his free hand and shoves three fingers into his hole, fingering himself purposefully and methodically, already wide open from sheer, heated want. He moans around John's penis and sucks harder. John's hips start to judder, he loses his rhythm for half a dozen rapid thrusts, Sherlock's hands inside both of them matching John's cock push for push, and then they're coming so hard Sherlock sees spots. As they spill, something fundamental between them shifts into place and Sherlock swallows, both to take John's come and because he has to: he's never been so shocked in his life.

In one sense, nothing has changed or, rather, nothing has changed that hasn't been wildly and erratically in flux since this whole fucking business started three days ago. In another, everything is completely different and he has absolutely no frame of reference for how to operate under these new conditions. He can _feel_ John. He can feel John love him. He can feel John feeling him love John. It's everything that was collecting behind his eyes and sternum while they were fucking echoed and answered and sent back to him. Only, where it threatened to ruin him before, now, though it still threatens to be too much, it's like there's a balm built in, soothing the roughest edges. He's not alone.

Sherlock pulls his fingers from John's arse and wraps them around his knot so Sherlock can pull back a bit and breathe, still caressing John's shaft with his tongue, while John twitches through his secondary and tertiary orgasms. Sherlock clenches around his own fingers sympathetically and can feel the potential for his next orgasm start to percolate inside him. They have about half an hour to rest before it becomes urgent, though. 

They do cry, later, at some point during the third round, after John’s managed to force a little of the cold takeaway Mrs. Hudson left on the kitchen counter into Sherlock and they’re both just as raw but a little more worn down. They don’t say anything about it, just keep pulling and pushing and drinking each other, and they take the extra salt along with the sweat building between their bodies, as a matter of course. Sherlock wants to stop. He’s too exposed and, after that first, fierce comfort of the bond, everything that has to happen is swelling up and threatening to break his ribcage again. No, not threatening to break his ribcage or anything of the sort. He is physically fine, aside from a bit of malnourishment and a liberal helping of dehydration. But somehow, with John, the psychosomatic ailments of deep emotion have reestablished themselves in Sherlock’s body as surely as John himself has made his home there and it _hurts_.

Sherlock naturally requires less sleep than John and, besides that, has trained himself to wake whenever there’s something to think about. So, a day or so into his heat, while John’s passed out and recuperating, he crawls out the window and onto the fire escape with a rumpled, but unopened, pack of cigarettes he’d secreted away months ago. He closes his eyes and tries to clear his mind as he takes his first pull, legs dangling off the edge of the metal grated fire escape. Arousal still burns low in his gut, and will for several more days, but it’s not pressing, currently. Not yet.

In conducting his experiment, Sherlock realizes, he’s changed the game. Maybe not entirely or in any way that alters how he’ll take down Moriarty—Sherlock still likely has to die—but now two things are different, good news and bad news: On the one hand, now John’s more likely to believe Sherlock’s death when it happens; he won’t anticipate the betrayal of it. On the other, since Sherlock’s promised not to pull this sort of stunt again, John’s less likely to forgive him in the long run. Sherlock might save John, spend however long it takes hiding, murdering, and enduring who knows what only to never share anything with him again, aside from, possibly, a punch in the mouth and a curt dismissal. Imagining this outcome is strangely flat. Sherlock knows, logically, that he’d still solve cases; he’d clear his name and continue to berate the Met for its incompetence, wallow in boredom between cases, and worry his brother, Lestrade, and Mrs. Hudson about his health, but Sherlock can’t picture it with any sort of reality. He’s not who he was before he met John, so imagining the past doesn’t work, and he can’t fathom who he’ll be after John, so that’s out too. 

Maybe, he thinks, forcing optimism, maybe the bond will solve it. Maybe the bond will be strong enough to ensure John forgives him. John’s a strong man, durable, flexible, (what was that saying about bending like grass or breaking like trees?), and the bond _does_ make the chances of him forgiving Sherlock slightly higher. It is, after all, an ancient, sacred union, lauded and explored in countless literary texts and social philosophies. The sheer intensity of the connection could keep John from cutting Sherlock out of his life completely. Sherlock inhales again and realizes that, without his noticing, he’s burnt his cigarette down to the filter. He lights another. 

This could end up turning out quite well. _John could very well still love you when it’s over and done with_. 

That changes nothing. ( _Oh, it changes everything; you’re fucking tickled pink, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, because you love him and care more about that and having him than his own lived experience, and if he keeps you, you’re happy. That’s your end game, Sherlock._ ) Sherlock flicks his cigarette off the little balcony and wonders, wryly, when his internal monologue acquired an Irish accent. 

John is still asleep when Sherlock slips back into bed, but he’s making noises like he wants to wake up and his cock is hard and already seeking friction against the sheets. The whole room must still smell of Sherlock and his heat and John’s in the thick of it. No fresh air or nicotine for him. Poor bastard. 

“John, wake up.” Sherlock curls around him, speaks into his ear. “I’m here.” He doesn’t think about when he won’t be.

  
  
  



End file.
